My head hurts trying to figure this stuff out - more questions re: Across the Sea [6x16]

I was just reminded of something and now --phew-- I'm more confused than ever...

If you subscribe to the theory that fMom is Smokey then how do you explain BiB seeing his real mom (Claudia)? (Him and not Jacob, I might add...) If fMom and Smokey are related in some way, why even bother showing BiB the other people on the island and planting the seeds of dissension?

Would it be fair to say that not even Jacob, MiB or fMom really know what's going on? And that they are just as LOST as the rest of me? [/pun]

Or is the general consensus fMom is not the smoke monster? I defer to the wisdom of the fandom on this one.

Between Michael's reveal about the whispers and this I think it's been made very clear that the dead on the island can appear to at least some people, over and beyond whatever forms MiB takes for his own ends.

I think the whole episode was designed to convince us that the island and its inhabitants are a lot less prolific than we previously assumed.

After spending an entire season trying to get us to believe the man in black isn't so bad, they give us an episode where he murks sayid, lapidus, sun, and jin. We realized he was selfish and vindictive and everything we were told was a lie.

The very next episode we see this look where Jacob is whiney and the man in black is actually the character who should be running the place. He is willing to do what he needs to do.

I think the episode did a good job of confirming that no one knows what's going on with the island. It also showed me that the candidate thing is bullshit, and Jacob doesn't even know why he's preventing the man in black to leave.

Fuck, man in black figures out his mom was murdered, and all he wants is to go home. Let the guy get the fuck off that island. I completely sympathize with his character and his hatred of Jacob, who seemingly and forcefully bonded him to the island when he was made the smoke monster.

If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that Jacob's action turned out to make the man in black the unwilling guardian of the island, and jacobs job is to keep the guardian from leaving.

I think you nailed it. Jacob turned his brother into the Island's security system. Because Jacob always believed in the Mother's stories, he's convinced that if the protector leaves, it will put out "the light" in all of human kind.

So, it becomes his eternal life's work to keep his brother on the Island, at any cost. Then, he brings people there to convince his brother that humanity should be saved, and MiB must stay on the Island.

It does seem that the Mother had some sort of power we didn't really see. The aftermath of her destruction of the village look a great deal like something the smoke monster might have done. However I think she really was killed by MiB and he really did become the smoke monster.

The real mother was a ghost trapped on the island just like Michael, and maybe Ben's mom.